Besotted
by pippermint
Summary: When hope and love desert, sometimes a moment of reflection by the window is all that's left. Written for The Domain's June 09 Challenge.


**A/N:** Written for The Domain's June '09 Challenge.

**Criteria for challenge:** Must be a oneshot about characters that aren't often written about, be at least 600 words, and incorporate at least three of the following ideas or images: flowers, life, eyes, death of a loved one, white, halo, and friendship. The prompt is marriage.

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"_I believe that she made the choice to stop giving him the potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced herself that he would have now fallen in love with her in return. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son." - Professor Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  


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The pale violet flowers by the window were no more. A single crinkled petal, blown inside by the wind one late summer day, lay on the floor at Merope Gaunt's swollen feet. In the flowers' place was a solid layer of gray snow, the top portion whiter than the bottom, where the soil from the flowerbox had mixed with it to form a dirty, lifeless slush. The lone window frame, a square of cracked paint and wood buckled by age, gave the sunken-faced girl a view of the nighttime city she could have done without. Her throat, rough as cheap wool, gave forth no scream or cry. She was prone to neither. Her father had called her a quiet baby; it was the only compliment he had ever offered.

Merope's window bordered a tenement house as shabby as her own. Across the air space, in a room that seemed to emanate a pearly gold halo of light, a Muggle woman with long brown braid of hair was knitting a tiny jumper. Her husband, a tall man who always seemed to wear ill-fitting suits, bent down to kiss her forehead and cheeks. She smiled at his touch, and the light surrounding them nearly stung Merope's vision. She might have heard the words they exchanged were it not for the window, stuck shut since the first frost of the season. No one was left to open it.

It had been several months since the wedding, a small affair that took place on one of London's many less-than-beautiful churches. But Merope had turned a cotton shift into a dress and train with some simple spellwork. Tom's best suit had needed no alterations, magical or otherwise. They were married by a minister who refused to look her directly in the eye, as if his subconscious balked at a witch's presence in the house of his god. But the groom's lips were sweet as roses against hers; the lustful weeks that followed completed her joy. She brewed the potion in her kitchen while he ate breakfast, humming the tunes of nursery rhymes under her breath.

It had been three weeks and five days since Tom had left. He had gone with nothing more than lint in the pockets of his coat, yet the door hinges had come together with a note of finality, making the growing life in her belly feel ominous. The gray of his eyes no longer bore a shine like precious hematite, but instead held the haughty gaze she had first observed through the squalor of the old Gaunt house. They were startlingly lucid and cold, and for one irrational moment Merope wished she had put the usual dose of _Amortentia_ in his morning cup of tea.

It had been two weeks and four days since she had last picked up her wand. The piece of willow wood sat on the table across the room. The practical end of the object faced the door, as if a simple spell could not only open it but also make anyone in the world appear on the other side. But soon the wand would be as dust-covered as the table and a little more hope would be stolen away from the tiny apartment and the lost soul inside.

Merope Gaunt stood by her window in the dark, wondering at the fullness in her belly and the incredible emptiness that seemed to contradict it. Silent snow had begun to fall again, and, in the next building, the couple had gone away from their own window to the warmth of another room. Merope raised one hand to touch the locket hanging from her necklace, but the metal burned cold against her collarbone. The ring on her left hand had turned to heavy iron. She smoothed down the fabric of her bridal gown, the once white gossamer now turned to a sad, sickly shade of gray. Briefly, once, she opened her mouth to speak, but found herself without words.

In a few weeks' time, she would look out the window for the last time.


End file.
